Future home and current professional environments will contain a large number of light sources of different nature and type: incandescent, halogen, discharge or LED (Light Emitting Diode) based lamps for ambient, atmosphere, accent or task lighting. Every light source has different control possibilities like dimming level, cold/warm lighting, RGB or other methods that change the effect of the light source on the environment.
Almost all of the control paradigms in lighting are lamp driven: the user selects a lamp, and operates directly on the controls of the lamp by modifying the dimming value, or by operating on the RGB (Red Green Blue) channels of the lamp. While it can be very natural to adjust the lighting effect on the location directly and not be bothered by looking for the lamps that are responsible for the effect on the location.
When the number of light sources is greater than 20, it can be difficult to trace an effect on a location back to the light source. Moreover, the effect might be the result of a combination of different light effects from light sources of different natures (e.g. Ambient TL (Task Lighting) and wall washing LED lamps). In that case, the user has to play with the lighting controls of the different lamps, and has to evaluate the effect of changing them. In some cases, this effect is rather global (e.g. for ambient lighting), in some cases, this effect is very local (e.g. a spot light). So the user has to find out, which control is related to which effect, and has to find out the size of the effect in order to approach the desired light setting.